PubNub is my goto solution for when I want to use sockets at scale. They have redundant data centers in 14 regions with 99.999% SLA allowing me to build realtime apps for any platform. Also Stephen (PubNub CTO) is Awesome!

Docker is the new kid on the block disrupting virtualization nowadays. You're able to save up to 70% of your development cost on AWS (or any other cloud) switching to Docker. For example instead of paying for many small VMs you can spin up a large one with many Docker containers to drastically lower your cost. That alone is only one of the reasons why Docker is the future and it's not even the best feature: isolation, testa­bil­i­ty, re­pro­ducibil­i­ty, standardization, security, and upgrading / down­grad­ing / ap­pli­ca­tion versions to name a few. You can spin up 1000's of Docker containers on an ordinary Laptop, but you would have trouble spinning up 100's of VMs. If you haven't already checked out Docker you're missing out on a huge opportunity to join the movement that will change development/production environments forever

Gulp is a new build system which shows a lot of promise. The use of streams and code-over-configuration makes for a simpler and more intuitive build. There isn't much boilerplate code so you're able to roll your own asset pipeline. Even if you don't know node.js streams, gulp is pretty readable and easier to understand.

PS: It's worth saying if you know Grunt then you can learn Gulp in a day.

a few bad practices such as polluting the global scope and not realizing you don't have global in the browser so I have to set window.global = window;

We only really need this for IE support